The ALPAGE-Vasserot Plan

The publication of the book from the work presented at the June 2010 concluding symposium brought about the publication of an early 19th century plan of Paris. This plan, made up of P. Vasserot's urban block plans georeferenced by the ALPAGE project, gives an accurate picture of Paris prior to the transformations of the industrial era. To aid orientation, current urban blocks appear as watermarks on the plan. The plan also includes a small map of the ancient 'arrondissements' (administrative districts) and 'quartiers' (neighbourhoods) prior to 1860. It can be purchased in A1 or A2 format from Presses universitaires de Vincennes.

Articles

Numerous scientific publications in the fields of history, archaeology, geomatics and computer science are a result of the work of the interdisciplinary research programme ALPAGE. These publications are listed below and some have been made directly available:

Grosso E., Noizet H., Robert S., Chareille P., "The ALPAGE historical GIS: a new tool allowing a new look at medieval Paris", in Proceedings of the XVI World Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (Florianopolis, Brazil, 4-10 September 2011) 4- Understanding Landscapes, from Land Discovery to their Spatial Organization, 2013, p. 77-87.

Robert S., Noizet H., Mirlou L., "The resilience of the old course of the Seine on the right bank of Paris", in S. Robert and B. Sittler (ed.) - Water as a morphogen in Landscapes – L’eau comme morphogène dans les paysages. UISPP PROCEEDINGS SERIES, UISPP – International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, Arc

Meeting minutes

The collaborative mode of operation of the ANR ALPAGE project revolved around several plenary meetings a year, alternating between La Rochelle and Paris. The aim of these meetings was to review the progress of the collective work. This progress is visible in the detailed minutes of these sessions that were attended each time by around 15 people including historians, geomaticians and computer scientists.

The georeferencing and vectorising of the most ancient available Parisian cadastral layers lies at the heart of the ALPAGE project. From this spatial reference (base maps) historical layers, mainly comprising the topography and the medieval and modern administrative boundaries, have been created.

The source plans correspond to the 910 Atlas Vasserot urban block plans (1810-1836): these plans contain the finest representation of the 12 ancient 'arrondissements' (administrative districts) in pre-Haussmann Paris and indicate not only the road networks, but also the plots and the buildings (plan of cross-sectional view 1m above ground).

After completion of the georeferencing phase of the 910 Vasserot urban block plans and during the vectorisation phase of these images, historians – mainly medievalist historians – created several historical layers based on their own thematic research. Those historians trained and advised by the project's geomaticians created their own geo-historical data in a Shapefile format. This work has taken into account the experiments already carried out or planned, in particular at the Ministère de la Culture (CNAU: Centre National d’Archéologie Urbaine), by reusing notably the simple but robust conceptual data model of functional entities using time as an attribute.

Administrative documentation

The establishment and management of a research project such as ALPAGE include administrative obligations principally aimed at the justification of the use of public funding. The documents (French versions only) sent to the French National Research Agency (ANR) are available below: